Portsmouth, England, 1963. In the waters off Whale Island, then home to Royal Navy base HMS Excellent, a seven year-old girl and her brother splash in the shallows. It’s probably summer, and the tide must be in, making the water warm and high enough to play in.
The little girl - in her white, frilly bathing suit – sees her brother move away across the causeway, and tries to follow. Instead, she’s swept out into open water.
Her aunt, heavily pregnant on the shore, sees a sailor on the bridge above them stop. Still in uniform, he dives into the water and swims to the drowning girl.
“I remember someone grabbing me, then he threw me off, and then I turned around and he grabbed me again,” says Shirley McGowan (née Worrall) – the girl who was rescued.
“He swam towards a fishing boat, put me in, and took me back to shore.”
Shirley is now in her early 60s, and lives in northern NSW. She’s sharing her story as part of Insight’s look at what it’s like to have a stranger save your life.
In the years since such an extraordinary experience, many of the show’s guests have tracked down their rescuers, and formed remarkable connections.
But Shirley is still looking for that sailor.
“I want to say thank you,” she says.
“I want him to know that I’ve had a good life in Australia, and there are 11 people here, who wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him.”
After the incident, Shirley’s mother visited HMS Excellent and left a bottle of whiskey for the sailor, but the family has no idea whether it reached him.
It’s an experience Shirley thinks about often, and it’s subtly carved out different directions in her life.
I’ll keep looking for him until the day I die.
After moving to Australia, she joined the St John’s Ambulance service as a volunteer, and currently helps with marine rescue operations on the NSW far north coast. She also runs a pay-it-forward page on Facebook.
She’s tried to track the sailor down over the years, posting publically on Facebook and writing to Portsmouth newspapers, but no information has come to light.
Insight has investigated a number of leads, but Shirley’s rescuer remains elusive.
We know the UK Navy has no internal records of a sailor being commended for heroic acts in Portsmouth, 1963.
The Commanding Officer of HMS Excellent at that time passed away a few years ago.
The Portsmouth Historical Centre has searched their records and microfilm from the time, similarly without luck.
And the Hampshire Constabulary has no records of an incident at the time, nor have they been able to locate a surviving force member who remembers the rescue.
Shirley is undeterred.
“I’ll keep looking for him until the day I die.”
If you have any information you think might help Shirley track down the sailor who saved her life, please email Madeleine.King@sbs.com.au.
